Ministry of higher and secondary special education of the republic uzbekistan state world languages university

IV. Typology of syntactic level of the English and Native languages

Key points for discussion: Definition of syntax. Classification of a syntactic level Typology of English, Russian and Uzbek syntactic levels.

1. 
   General information
   

The syntax of a language studies the units more complicated than the word. These are the phrase (word-combination) and the sentence, their combinations, types, structures of sentences and parts of the sentences.

The Syntactic typology is engaged in a comparison of syntactic level units. The basic units for comparison are the phrase and the sentence. Depending on the character of the research the Syntactic typology may fall into several sections: comparison of units of a word-combination, the level of the sentence, as well as comparison of units of various levels with regards to their syntactic functioning. The Syntactic typology usually compares languages on the basis of a transformational syntax.
Phrase is a combination of two or more notional words syntactically related to each other and having a nominative function. It is the smallest speech pattern and consists of two notional words which are grammatically and lexically connected to each other. Phrases, like words, denote objects, phenomena, action or process. However, unlike words, they represent them as complicated phenomena.
A sentence is an integral unit of speech having a communicative purpose; it expresses a statement, a question or inducement. The sentence expresses predication, i.e. shows whether the event is real or unreal, desirable or obligatory, stated as truth or asked about, etc. The sentence can consist of one or several notional words. In Uzbek the sentence is characterized as a smallest communicative unit with the following features:

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  it has predication which consists of modality and time. It may have the meanings of a person and a number;
  
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  it is addressed to a hearer;
  
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  it has a new information;
  
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  it has the speaker’s intention;
  
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  it is related to a certain speech situation;
  
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  it has a definite intonation.
  

Phrases and sentences are universal linguistic phenomena. Their structures can be used as a basis for typological comparison.
For identifying the type of a phrase, the following criteria have been established:
a) the type of a syntactical connection in a phrase;
b) the means of expressing the syntactical connection;
c) the position of the elements of the phrase.
The elements of a phrase can be syntactically equal or unequal. In the former case, neither of the elements modifies the other. We can change their position without any change of meaning. Such combinations are called equipotent.
For example: father and son; son and father.
If the elements are syntactically unequal, one of them modifies the other. The principal element is called the “kernel” or “head word”. The subordinate element is called “the adjunct”. Their respective positions are different for different types of phrases and different languages. Such phrases are called dominational.
The connections between the elements of a dominational phrase can be further grouped into: